In this culmination of his search for anthropological concepts and practices appropriate to the twenty-first century, the author contends that to make sense of the contemporary, anthropologists must ...
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In this culmination of his search for anthropological concepts and practices appropriate to the twenty-first century, the author contends that to make sense of the contemporary, anthropologists must invent new forms of inquiry. He begins with an extended rumination on what he gained from two of his formative mentors: Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz. Reflecting on their lives as teachers and thinkers, as well as human beings, the author poses questions about their critical limitations, unfulfilled hopes, and the lessons he learned from and with them. This spirit of collaboration animates this book, as the author assesses the last ten years of his career, largely spent engaging in a series of intensive experiments in collaborative research and often focused on cutting-edge work in synthetic biology. He candidly details the successes and failures of shifting his teaching practice away from individual projects, placing greater emphasis on participation over observation in research, and designing and using websites as a venue for collaboration. Analyzing these endeavors alongside his efforts to apply an anthropological lens to the natural sciences, the author lays the foundation for an ethically grounded anthropology ready and able to face the challenges of our contemporary world.Less

The Accompaniment : Assembling the Contemporary

Paul Rabinow

Published in print: 2011-11-15

In this culmination of his search for anthropological concepts and practices appropriate to the twenty-first century, the author contends that to make sense of the contemporary, anthropologists must invent new forms of inquiry. He begins with an extended rumination on what he gained from two of his formative mentors: Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz. Reflecting on their lives as teachers and thinkers, as well as human beings, the author poses questions about their critical limitations, unfulfilled hopes, and the lessons he learned from and with them. This spirit of collaboration animates this book, as the author assesses the last ten years of his career, largely spent engaging in a series of intensive experiments in collaborative research and often focused on cutting-edge work in synthetic biology. He candidly details the successes and failures of shifting his teaching practice away from individual projects, placing greater emphasis on participation over observation in research, and designing and using websites as a venue for collaboration. Analyzing these endeavors alongside his efforts to apply an anthropological lens to the natural sciences, the author lays the foundation for an ethically grounded anthropology ready and able to face the challenges of our contemporary world.

Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred ...
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Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred films, both documentary and fiction, and exerted an influence far beyond academia. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Rouch's practical filmmaking methods, which he developed while conducting anthropological research in West Africa in the 1940s–1950s. His innovative use of unscripted improvization by his subjects had a profound impact on the French New Wave, the author reveals, while his documentary work launched the genre of cinema-vérité. In addition to tracking Rouch's pioneering career, the author examines the technical strategies, aesthetic considerations, and ethical positions that contribute to Rouch's cinematographic legacy.Less

The Adventure of the Real : Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema

Paul Henley

Published in print: 2010-02-01

Though relatively unsung in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch (1917–2004) was a towering figure of ethnographic cinema, who, over the course of a fifty-year career, completed over one hundred films, both documentary and fiction, and exerted an influence far beyond academia. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Rouch's practical filmmaking methods, which he developed while conducting anthropological research in West Africa in the 1940s–1950s. His innovative use of unscripted improvization by his subjects had a profound impact on the French New Wave, the author reveals, while his documentary work launched the genre of cinema-vérité. In addition to tracking Rouch's pioneering career, the author examines the technical strategies, aesthetic considerations, and ethical positions that contribute to Rouch's cinematographic legacy.

This book examines the simultaneously material, social and emotional exchanges involved when African migrants venture to Europe in search of a better life. As we argue, these exchange are part of a ...
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This book examines the simultaneously material, social and emotional exchanges involved when African migrants venture to Europe in search of a better life. As we argue, these exchange are part of a broader quest for social regeneration that involve negotiations of family ties and intimate relationships at home and abroad as well as complicated encounters with state officials and laws hindering or facilitating their journeys. In this migratory process exchange of everything from money, goods and advice to sentiments, phone calls and assurances of belonging are part of transnational circuits that enable, block or control mobility through social networks. We call the circuits that emerge from the sending, withholding and receiving of goods, ideas, bodies and emotions affective circuits. We focus especially on how affective circuits operate in the context of contemporary African migration to Europe, following in the footsteps of migrants and their families, husbands, wives, friends, peers and lovers across African countries like Ghana, Gambia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Congo, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique and European countries like France, Italy, Portugal, UK, Germany and Denmark. Through fieldwork in both Africa and Europe the authors analyze how exchanges work, how they are socially, culturally, morally and historically embedded, and how they regenerate and reshape kin and other intimate formations in our times of worldwide migrations.Less

Affective Circuits : African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration

Published in print: 2016-11-30

This book examines the simultaneously material, social and emotional exchanges involved when African migrants venture to Europe in search of a better life. As we argue, these exchange are part of a broader quest for social regeneration that involve negotiations of family ties and intimate relationships at home and abroad as well as complicated encounters with state officials and laws hindering or facilitating their journeys. In this migratory process exchange of everything from money, goods and advice to sentiments, phone calls and assurances of belonging are part of transnational circuits that enable, block or control mobility through social networks. We call the circuits that emerge from the sending, withholding and receiving of goods, ideas, bodies and emotions affective circuits. We focus especially on how affective circuits operate in the context of contemporary African migration to Europe, following in the footsteps of migrants and their families, husbands, wives, friends, peers and lovers across African countries like Ghana, Gambia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Congo, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique and European countries like France, Italy, Portugal, UK, Germany and Denmark. Through fieldwork in both Africa and Europe the authors analyze how exchanges work, how they are socially, culturally, morally and historically embedded, and how they regenerate and reshape kin and other intimate formations in our times of worldwide migrations.

Civil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola—but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, ...
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Civil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola—but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The essays in this book address Africa’s future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena. Bringing together social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints, the book reveals not one but multiple prospects for the future of Africa. In doing so, it offers a pathbreaking model of pluralistic and open-ended thinking and a powerful tool for addressing the vexing uncertainties that underlie so many futures around the world.Less

African Futures : Essays on Crisis, Emergence, and Possibility

Published in print: 2017-01-31

Civil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola—but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The essays in this book address Africa’s future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena. Bringing together social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints, the book reveals not one but multiple prospects for the future of Africa. In doing so, it offers a pathbreaking model of pluralistic and open-ended thinking and a powerful tool for addressing the vexing uncertainties that underlie so many futures around the world.

This book argues that the central assumption of immunology—that we survive through the recognition and elimination of non-self—has become a defining concept of the modern age. Tracing this ...
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This book argues that the central assumption of immunology—that we survive through the recognition and elimination of non-self—has become a defining concept of the modern age. Tracing this immunological understanding of self and other through an incredibly diverse array of venues, from medical research to legal and military strategies and the electronic revolution, the author shows how this defensive way of looking at the world not only destroys diversity but also eliminates the possibility of truly engaging difference, thereby impoverishing our culture and foreclosing tremendous opportunities for personal growth. To illustrate these destructive consequences, he likens the current craze for embracing diversity and the use of politically correct speech to a cultural potluck to which we each bring different dishes, but at which no one can eat unless they abide by the same rules. Similarly, loaning money to developing nations serves as a tool both to make the peoples in those nations more like us and to maintain them in the nonthreatening status of distant dependents. To break free of the resulting downward spiral of homogenization and self-focus, the author suggests that we instead adopt a new defining concept based on embryology, in which development and self-growth take place through a process of incorporation and transformation. In this effort he suggests that we have much to learn from non-Western peoples, such as the Balinese, whose ritual practices require them to take on the considerable risk of injecting into their selves the potential dangers of otherness—and in so doing ultimately strengthen themselves as well as their society.Less

The Age of Immunology : Conceiving A Future in an Alienating World

A. David Napier

Published in print: 2003-01-01

This book argues that the central assumption of immunology—that we survive through the recognition and elimination of non-self—has become a defining concept of the modern age. Tracing this immunological understanding of self and other through an incredibly diverse array of venues, from medical research to legal and military strategies and the electronic revolution, the author shows how this defensive way of looking at the world not only destroys diversity but also eliminates the possibility of truly engaging difference, thereby impoverishing our culture and foreclosing tremendous opportunities for personal growth. To illustrate these destructive consequences, he likens the current craze for embracing diversity and the use of politically correct speech to a cultural potluck to which we each bring different dishes, but at which no one can eat unless they abide by the same rules. Similarly, loaning money to developing nations serves as a tool both to make the peoples in those nations more like us and to maintain them in the nonthreatening status of distant dependents. To break free of the resulting downward spiral of homogenization and self-focus, the author suggests that we instead adopt a new defining concept based on embryology, in which development and self-growth take place through a process of incorporation and transformation. In this effort he suggests that we have much to learn from non-Western peoples, such as the Balinese, whose ritual practices require them to take on the considerable risk of injecting into their selves the potential dangers of otherness—and in so doing ultimately strengthen themselves as well as their society.

This book argues that HIV/AIDS policy has been a venue through which the South African government has attempted to balance the contradictory demands of postcolonial nation-building: forced to satisfy ...
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This book argues that HIV/AIDS policy has been a venue through which the South African government has attempted to balance the contradictory demands of postcolonial nation-building: forced to satisfy the demands of neoliberal global capital and meet the needs of its poorest populations. It suggests that one of the primary ways in which this ‘postcolonial paradox’ is managed is through the re-signification of the tropes of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ – both within the public sphere and in the discourses and ideologies of people living with HIV/AIDS. The book traces the politics of AIDS in South Africa from 1994 through 2010, analyzing: the political economy of the post-apartheid health system, the symbolic struggle between ‘AIDS denialists’ and treatment activists over the signification of HIV/AIDS, and the ways in which communities profoundly affected by the epidemic incorporate culturally hybrid subjectivities, informed by both indigenous and biomedical healing paradigms. As such, it draws connections between the macro and micro levels – insisting therefore, not only on the reciprocal nature of causality, but also on the often complex and contradictory relationship between global processes, national policies and local practices. This bio-political history is positioned within the squatter camp, considering HIV/AIDS politics from the perspective of those in whose name these battles are fought but who have been rendered voiceless in its telling. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted in informal settlements on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the book details what it is like to live with and die of AIDS in South Africa’s urban slums.Less

Ancestors and Antiretrovirals : The Bio-Politics of HIV/AIDS in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Claire Laurier Decoteau

Published in print: 2013-10-04

This book argues that HIV/AIDS policy has been a venue through which the South African government has attempted to balance the contradictory demands of postcolonial nation-building: forced to satisfy the demands of neoliberal global capital and meet the needs of its poorest populations. It suggests that one of the primary ways in which this ‘postcolonial paradox’ is managed is through the re-signification of the tropes of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ – both within the public sphere and in the discourses and ideologies of people living with HIV/AIDS. The book traces the politics of AIDS in South Africa from 1994 through 2010, analyzing: the political economy of the post-apartheid health system, the symbolic struggle between ‘AIDS denialists’ and treatment activists over the signification of HIV/AIDS, and the ways in which communities profoundly affected by the epidemic incorporate culturally hybrid subjectivities, informed by both indigenous and biomedical healing paradigms. As such, it draws connections between the macro and micro levels – insisting therefore, not only on the reciprocal nature of causality, but also on the often complex and contradictory relationship between global processes, national policies and local practices. This bio-political history is positioned within the squatter camp, considering HIV/AIDS politics from the perspective of those in whose name these battles are fought but who have been rendered voiceless in its telling. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted in informal settlements on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the book details what it is like to live with and die of AIDS in South Africa’s urban slums.

Starting with the discovery of a curious plot in which science became the handmaiden of white-collar crime, this book tracks a group of Victorian gentlemen-swindlers as they shuffled between the ...
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Starting with the discovery of a curious plot in which science became the handmaiden of white-collar crime, this book tracks a group of Victorian gentlemen-swindlers as they shuffled between the corridors of the London Stock Exchange and the meeting rooms of learned societies. It explores what the author calls “the stock exchange modality:” how the production of scientific truth became every bit as integral as financial engineering to investment and speculation in foreign government debt. This book underscores the crucial role of finance in shaping the contours of human knowledge and vice versa in an age of mercantile expansion. It argues that finance and science were at the heart of that new brand of imperialism, born under Benjamin Disraeli’s first term as Britain’s prime minister. This new imperialism built on the multiple covert links between the birth of social sciences and novel mechanisms of financial revenue creation and extraction. As anthropologists advocated the study of Miskito Indians or stated their views on a Jamaican Rebellion or Abyssinian Expedition, they responded and catered to the impulses of the Stock Exchange. The marriage between anthropological science and finance produced essential technologies of globalization, and formed the foundational structures of late nineteenth century British imperialismLess

Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange : A Financial History of Victorian Science

Marc Flandreau

Published in print: 2016-09-19

Starting with the discovery of a curious plot in which science became the handmaiden of white-collar crime, this book tracks a group of Victorian gentlemen-swindlers as they shuffled between the corridors of the London Stock Exchange and the meeting rooms of learned societies. It explores what the author calls “the stock exchange modality:” how the production of scientific truth became every bit as integral as financial engineering to investment and speculation in foreign government debt. This book underscores the crucial role of finance in shaping the contours of human knowledge and vice versa in an age of mercantile expansion. It argues that finance and science were at the heart of that new brand of imperialism, born under Benjamin Disraeli’s first term as Britain’s prime minister. This new imperialism built on the multiple covert links between the birth of social sciences and novel mechanisms of financial revenue creation and extraction. As anthropologists advocated the study of Miskito Indians or stated their views on a Jamaican Rebellion or Abyssinian Expedition, they responded and catered to the impulses of the Stock Exchange. The marriage between anthropological science and finance produced essential technologies of globalization, and formed the foundational structures of late nineteenth century British imperialism

With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century ...
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With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there that the battle lines of today's “culture wars” were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of “freak shows,” the author demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.Less

Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany

Andrew Zimmerman

Published in print: 2001-12-01

With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there that the battle lines of today's “culture wars” were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of “freak shows,” the author demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.

Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book ...
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Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book reveals, its development was profoundly altered by the conflict. As the war shaped the institutional, ideological, and physical environment for anthropological work, the discipline turned its back on its liberal roots and became a nationalist endeavor primarily concerned with scientific studies of race. Combining intellectual and cultural history with the history of science, this book examines both the origins and consequences of this shift. Evans locates its roots in the decision to allow scientists access to prisoner-of-war camps, which prompted them to focus their research on racial studies of the captives. Caught up in wartime nationalism, a new generation of anthropologists began to portray the country's political enemies as racially different. After the war ended, the importance placed on racial conceptions and categories persisted, paving the way for the politicization of scientific inquiry in the years of the ascendancy of National Socialism.Less

Anthropology at War : World War I and the Science of Race in Germany

Andrew D. Evans

Published in print: 2010-09-15

Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book reveals, its development was profoundly altered by the conflict. As the war shaped the institutional, ideological, and physical environment for anthropological work, the discipline turned its back on its liberal roots and became a nationalist endeavor primarily concerned with scientific studies of race. Combining intellectual and cultural history with the history of science, this book examines both the origins and consequences of this shift. Evans locates its roots in the decision to allow scientists access to prisoner-of-war camps, which prompted them to focus their research on racial studies of the captives. Caught up in wartime nationalism, a new generation of anthropologists began to portray the country's political enemies as racially different. After the war ended, the importance placed on racial conceptions and categories persisted, paving the way for the politicization of scientific inquiry in the years of the ascendancy of National Socialism.

This book explores language and interaction within a contemporary Native American legal system. Grounded in extensive field research on the Hopi Tribe of northeastern Arizona—on whose appellate court ...
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This book explores language and interaction within a contemporary Native American legal system. Grounded in extensive field research on the Hopi Tribe of northeastern Arizona—on whose appellate court he now serves as Justice Pro Tempore—this work explains how Hopi notions of tradition and culture shape and are shaped by the processes of Hopi jurisprudence. Like many indigenous legal institutions across North America, the Hopi Tribal Court was created in the image of Anglo-American-style law. However, the book shows that in recent years, Hopi jurists and litigants have called for their courts to develop a jurisprudence that better reflects Hopi culture and traditions. Providing insights into the Hopi and English courtroom interactions through which this conflict plays out, the book argues that tensions between the language of Anglo-style law and Hopi tradition both drive Hopi jurisprudence and make it unique. Ultimately, this analyses of the language of Hopi law offer a fresh approach to the cultural politics that influence indigenous legal and governmental practices worldwide.Less

Arguing with Tradition : The Language of Law in Hopi Tribal Court

Justin B. Richland

Published in print: 2008-08-01

This book explores language and interaction within a contemporary Native American legal system. Grounded in extensive field research on the Hopi Tribe of northeastern Arizona—on whose appellate court he now serves as Justice Pro Tempore—this work explains how Hopi notions of tradition and culture shape and are shaped by the processes of Hopi jurisprudence. Like many indigenous legal institutions across North America, the Hopi Tribal Court was created in the image of Anglo-American-style law. However, the book shows that in recent years, Hopi jurists and litigants have called for their courts to develop a jurisprudence that better reflects Hopi culture and traditions. Providing insights into the Hopi and English courtroom interactions through which this conflict plays out, the book argues that tensions between the language of Anglo-style law and Hopi tradition both drive Hopi jurisprudence and make it unique. Ultimately, this analyses of the language of Hopi law offer a fresh approach to the cultural politics that influence indigenous legal and governmental practices worldwide.

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